The harder you try to pull away,
the tighter I squeeze,
and I swear I don't mean to come off too strong,
but a history of abandonment
and fizzling potential
has left me with constrictor instincts

There is a softness to this stagnation
A familiarity
It's true what they say
about finding comfort in this
It is surprisingly easy to sink in still water
The great lake of potential swallows me up
and some days I can barely keep my nose above water
The rest I spend holding my breath

I once said if I could choose how I would die,
I would choose to drown
Sometimes the threat of the great darkness
looms for so long you forget to fear it
Sometimes you grow accustomed
to the taste of your own waterlogged heart
and the shore lies too far ahead for you to see the lighthouse

And sometimes that bright unknown is what you fear most

This eternal longing for the soft embrace of Rest grows ever-stronger while my will shrinks by every passing infinite moment
I am suspended in place, held aloft by pure stubbornness and not-entirely-honest hope for a better life come next Spring
And to think of what I might miss if I let myself sleep...
Well, that pain nearly overbears the dull ache of existing at all

So here I will remain forever, one foot caught in a trap I set for myself out of fear on my darkest hour and the other foot just barely toeing the border of a daunting place I hope to never set my eyes upon

They say you can't win if you don't play and,
yeah, maybe quitters never win but they never lose either
They simply exist
I simply exist
No playing into societal rules about what makes me acceptable
Don't you want to be pretty? they ask
Don't you want love?
Don't you want to people to like you?
No.
******* and your approval
I like me and like that I quit

One moment you're on your way home, driving a car you just bought two weeks ago and the next you're gasping for air, tearing at a safety feature that now seems to have been created to keep you trapped
The dead hands of despair and terror and loss grip your heart and rip it from its home in your chest
You're out of the car and screaming and a man is asking if you're okay while you're wondering the same about the woman in the other car
He's holding your dog and looking at you rightfully wary
Swears spill from your mouth faster than the blood and you didn't even know you were bleeding and everything is panic and pain and hopelessness because **** there goes everything you've been working for for the last six months
All of your dreams were wrapped up in that car and now that car is wrapped around itself
You wrap up around yourself and the rest of the night is a blur
You let everyone take care if it for you, immediately falling back into a pit of old habits you have been clawing your way out of
The car is in your garage now and your college acceptance letter sits in a box, both collecting dust and pity and your avoidance

The leaves turn green to red
 to brown to dust and my end looms on the horizon
If there is beauty in the changing of the seasons
then there is beauty in death
and I see no beauty in death
Even with the knowledge
that rebirth will come there is no reprieve
The fear settles in like the first snow,
enveloping me in frost and stagnation
My life will turn to pain to numbness
to nothing
as the leaves begin to fall
and my end is in sight

So this is how it ends?
All of the fizzle and bang and loose threads?
Saltwater wounds, tightrope casualty, red burning throats
This is not laryngitis 
This is my heart shredding it's home, trying to escape
And maybe it learned it from you
Saw the escapist make her out of a trap called loyalty,
decided it wanted to give it try,
realized too late that you can take yourself out of a home
but the pain always follows